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August 2011
IPTS WORKING PAPER ON CORPORATE R&D AND INNOVATION - 04/2011
JOB CREATION IN BUSINESS SERVICES
The IPTS Working Papers on Corporate R&D and Innovation address economic and policy questions
related to industrial research and innovation and their contribution to European competitiveness. Mainly
aimed at policy analysts and the academic community, these are scientific papers (relevant to and
highlighting possible policy implications) and proper scientific publications which are typically issued when
submitted to peer-reviewed scientific journals. The working papers are useful for communicating our
preliminary research findings to a wide audience, to promote discussion and feedback aimed at further
improvements. They are considered works in progress and are subject to revision.
These IPTS Working Papers on Corporate R&D and Innovation can take the form of more policy-oriented
notes, mainly addressed towards EU policy-makers. They present policy implications derived from our
own research and the views of the most prominent authors in the field, with appropriate references.
This Working Paper (No. 04/2011 – [August 2011]) is issued in the context of the Industrial Research
Monitoring and Analysis (IRMA)1 activities that are jointly carried out by the European Commission's
Joint Research Centre (JRC) – Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) and the Directorate
General for Research - Directorate C, European Research Area: Knowledge-based economy.
IRMA activities aim to improve the understanding of industrial R&D and Innovation in the EU and to
identify medium and long-term policy implications. More information, including activities and publications,
is available at: http://iri.jrc.es/ and http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/
The main authors of this paper are Francesco Bogliacino (European Commission, Joint Research
Center- Institute for Perspective Technological Studies, Seville; Rise Group, Medellin), Matteo
Lucchese (University of Urbino) and Mario Pianta (University of Urbino). This paper builds on a
presentation given at the workshop “Business services for innovation, internationalisation and growth”,
held at the University of Rome La Sapienza, 2-3 December 2010. We would like to thank Rinaldo
Evangelista, Valentina Meliciani and the participants for their comments. We also appreciate the
comments and suggestions of three anonymous referees. The analysis conducted in the paper has
been developed in the context of the SID database update, reference to contract 151834-2010A08-IT
by the European Commission JRC.
The IPTS Working Papers on Corporate R&D and Innovation are published under the editorial
responsibility of Fernando Hervás, Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello and Andries Brandsma at the
Knowledge for Growth Unit – Economics of Industrial Research and Innovation Action of IPTS/Joint
Research Centre of the European Commission, Michele Cincera of the Solvay Brussels School of
Economics and Management, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and Enrico Santarelli of the University of
Bologna.
Legal Notice
Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission
is responsible for any use made of this publication.
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JOB CREATION IN BUSINESS SERVICES
Abstract
The patterns and mechanisms of job creation in business services are investigated in this
article by considering the role of innovation, demand, wages and the composition of
employment by professional groups. A model is developed and an empirical test is carried out
with parallel analyses on a group of selected business services, on other services and on
manufacturing sectors, considering six major European countries over the period 1996-2007.
Within technological activities, a distinction is made between those supporting either
technological competitiveness, or cost competitiveness. Demand variables allow identifying
the special role of intermediate demand.
Job creation in business services appears to be driven by efforts to expand technological
competitiveness and by the fast growing intermediate demand coming from other industries;
conversely, process innovation leads to job losses and wage growth has a negative effect that
is lower than in other industries. Business services show an increasingly polarised
employment structure.
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1 Introduction
In recent decades a number of service industries closely linked to business activities in the
rest of the economy – business services – have shown a strong dynamism in terms of
innovation and employment growth; they create and diffuse knowledge, are extensive users of
ICTs and have a strong impact on the activity of manufacturing and other services; in this way
they are emerging as potential drivers of economic growth and job creation.
A large literature has recently emerged on the importance and potential of business services
in advanced economies, emphasising the outsourcing of activities from manufacturing and the
rise of knowledge-based activities with a potential for spreading innovations across all the
economy (see, among others, Kox, 2001; Miles, 2007).
From a European policy perspective, the growing interconnections between business services
and manufacturing require a deep analysis of dynamics of these industries, in order to achieve
a better calibration of industrial policies.1
In this article we identify the subset of service industries that share the above characteristics
and contrast them with other services and manufacturing sectors, focusing on six major
European countries - Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and the UK - over the
period 1996-2007. After considering the patterns of growth for value added, employment,
productivity, innovative activities and qualification of jobs in terms of professional categories,
we identify the following industries as business services: Post and Telecommunications
(NACE Division 64), Renting of Machinery and Equipment (NACE Division 71), Computer and
Related Activities (NACE Division 72), Research and Development (NACE Division 73), and
Other Business Activities (NACE Division 74).
While some heterogeneity exists within this group, they systematically outperform other
services and manufacturing sectors in the aspects listed above (as will be shown in section 3)
and share a key role as providers of high-value inputs to the rest of the economy (on this role,
see Evangelista, Lucchese and Meliciani, 2011). In the six countries we investigate, this group
of business services accounts for 14% of value added and 15% of employees in 2007, but
their employment growth has been much faster than that for the whole economy.
Financial services, banking and insurance are omitted from this definition because their
growth has been highly dependent - especially in some countries - on speculative bubbles that
have led to the 2008 crises and job creation has been illusory. Moreover, their innovative
stance has been more limited and restructuring practices were significant well before the crisis
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JOB CREATION IN BUSINESS SERVICES
1
The relationship between manufacturing and associated services is quoted in the Industrial Policy
flagship of Europe 2020 strategy, such as the role played by ICT and technology along the value
chain.
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Third, from labour market studies we consider the relevance of wage growth in order to test
whether job creation in business services is affected by the ‘neoclassical’ trade off between
wage and employment growth.
Fourth, we control for the market structure, using both a proxy of concentration (Herfindahl
index) and the average firm size in the sector, in order to account for both competitive
pressure and industry evolution dynamics (entry patterns, etc.).
Finally, given that recent literature has emphasised the quality, and not just the quantity, of
employment, we consider the way employment is composed in terms of professional groups
as important and examine events that have occurred in business services, comparing them to
other services and manufacturing. In particular, we used data on the shares of four major
professional groups – managers and professionals; clerks; craft workers; manual workers -
and investigate the occupational structure’s growing polarisation, with net job creation mainly
in the top and bottom groups (Nascia and Pianta, 2008).
Different models are proposed in order to explain the driving forces of employment change in
business services and other industry groups, highlighting mechanisms linked to technological
strategies, demand dynamics and labour markets.
Empirical work and econometric tests are based on the database developed at the University
of Urbino, the Sectoral Innovation Database (SID) (Lucchese and Pianta, 2011) which
provides a broad description of different dimensions of industry activities. It integrates
innovation data from EUROSTAT Community Innovation Surveys (CIS) with a large number of
indicators on economic and demand variables from the OECD STAN database and the OECD
Input-Output Tables. The SID dataset covers 22 manufacturing sectors and 17 service sectors
- NACE REV.1 subsections - for six European countries - Germany, France, Italy, The
Netherlands, Spain and the UK, which represent around 80% of the EU-12’s value added
during the two decades under consideration.
The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 reviews the existing literature on business
services and employment; Section 3 offers a descriptive analysis on the dynamics of business
services and their employment structure, considering the role of innovation and demand;
Section 4 presents the model and the econometric strategy; Section 5 shows the results; and
Section 6 provides a conclusion.
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2 Literature review
2.1. The growth of business services
In the last decades, the weight of business services in the economy has rapidly grown. Many
studies have analysed the determinants, with different levels of analysis pointing out the
diversified patterns across time and countries.
Kox (2001), Kox and Rubalcaba (2007) and Miles (2007) offer an exhaustive description of
channels through which business services have risen in the last decades both in terms of
value added and employment growth. Their rise is related to activity outsourcing, which were
previously carried out within manufacturing firms. In this case, job creation and value-added
growth in the business services industry have replaced the drop in manufacturing production.
2
Kox and Rubalcaba (2007).
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shown that these dynamics are dependent on country and sectoral conditions (Baker, 2007),
‘Baumol’s disease’ is involved by an increasing weight of services which could reduce overall
economic system growth.
The specificity of business services – which often have higher productivity performances than
‘traditional' services – has been pointed out. A major factor here is the importance of
knowledge and innovation in business services, often related to the application and diffusion
of ICTs; the provision of business services and the vast knowledge externalities that originate
from the sector may contribute to better performances in the whole economy. These aspects
and the diffusion of knowledge through the relationships that are established among industries
have been documented extensively in the literature (Antonelli, 1999; Camacho and Rodriguez,
2007; Evangelista et al., 2011 in this special issue).
The literature reviewed above explains employment growth in business services as a result of
the structural change in advanced economies. However, the importance of knowledge and
innovation as a source of job creation in this emerging industry requires consideration for the
role that innovation plays in affecting employment. Deeply discussed since the Classical
Economics era, the relationship between technological change and employment has
traditionally been empirically investigated only considering the manufacturing industry, starting
with the pioneering works of Freeman, Clark, and Soete (1982) and Freeman and Soete,
(1987, 1994).3
Studies focusing on the firm level have generally found a positive relationship between
innovation and job creation (see for instance Van Reenen, 1997; Piva and Vivarelli, 2005;
Piva, Santarelli and Vivarelli, 2005; Evangelista and Savona, 2003; Mansury and Love, 2008).
Greenan and Guellec (2000) however find that the positive employment impact of product and
process innovation at the firm level disappears at industry level (where only new products lead
to new jobs).
In fact, innovative firms face no demand constraint and when they are more efficient – through
either new products or processes – they can expand output and jobs also at the expense of
competitors. Conversely, at the industry level the overall potential for job creation is
constrained by increasing industry demand and by the dynamics of labour productivity.
Building on the Schumpeterian distinction between product and process innovation, Pianta
3
Surveys of current literature - with different perspectives and coverage - are in Addison and Teixeira,
2001; Acemoglu, 2002; Chennells and Van Reenen, 2002; Spiezia and Vivarelli, 2002; and Pianta,
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2005.
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the particular nature of business services. Fourth, the quality of jobs has to be taken on board
in the analysis, with attention to the professions and skills present in jobs created and lost.
The approach we will follow herein will be based on these lessons from recent literature..
3 Empirical evidence
Job creation in services is not uniform. If we examine employment growth from 1996 to 2007
in the six major European economies (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and The
Netherlands) a substantial divide emerges between traditional and business-service activities.
In Graph 3.1., services are grouped by Trade and Leisure (NACE Divisions 50-55), Transport
and Storage (NACE Divisions 60-63), Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (NACE Divisions
65-70) and Business Services (NACE Divisions 64, 71-74): the latter grow twice as much as
other services do, while the rising weight of finance in the economy is not matched by a rapid
growth in employment. The variability within macro sectors is however not negligible: in
business services, Post and Telecommunications have experienced void employment
dynamics, while Computer and Related Activities grew 7% per year on average among the
countries considered. Other Business Activities (NACE Division 74), which represents more
than half of employment of all business services, grew 5%.
This pattern looks stable among the countries: business services show higher dynamics than
overall services; the gap is marked for Germany, where their growth is twice as much as the
growth in the whole service sector. The higher services’ growth rates as a whole in Spain and
Italy are associated to the late development of the tertiarisation process. A more detailed
picture for each service industry is provided in the Appendix.
Graph 3.1. Compound annual rates of employment growth from 1996 to 2007. Averages
among countries and sectors.
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Graph 3.2. explores the employment dynamics from 1996 to 2007, considering the trend of
the manufacturing sector, overall services and business services. Their dynamics appear to
be similar, although the performance of manufacturing is strickingly lower than that of
services: from 2000 to 2007, the European manufacturing system has destroyed a large
quantity of jobs, replaced by a recovery in service and (especially) business services
industries. The latter have strongly suffered the economic crisis from 2000 to 2003 and have
not returned to rapid growth until 2007.
Graph 3.2. Annual rates of employment growth. Average values among countries.
Looking at Graph 3.2., three phases of development can be identified: from 1996 to 2000
there is a strong employment growth in services, pushed by job creation in business services;
from 2000 to 2003 the destruction of employment in manufacturing is not counterbalanced by
a growth of employment in services; from 2003 to 2007 manufacturing reduces its job losses
and a strong divergence emerges in the formation of employment between traditional and
business services. The dynamics of business services seem to be more subject to the
economic cycle than other services, as Kox and Rubalcaba (2007) have suggested: this
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seems to be due to the high integration of business services with the manufacturing sector
and to a high level of labour flexibility.
The different growth of services brings about a change in the qualitative development of jobs
offered.4 Many studies have in fact focused on a change in the composition of skills required
following the structural change process.
Look at the composition of employment by professions (Graph 3.3.) in 2000. Manufacturing
and services are characterised by a different composition: services are marked by a higher
share of Managers and Clerks while Craft and Manual workers constitute the greater part of
manufacturing employment. Educational levels distribution is obviously related to differences
in professions. A general process of up-skilling is present in all sectors, although the
differences between manufacturing and services seem to be less relevant. Additional
evidence on the employment change rates in each of the four professional groups is provided
in the Appendix.
4
Due to the availability of data for professions and educations, five countries are considered here (The
Netherlands are excluded) for a reduced period of time, from 2000 to 2003. Professions are grouped by
Managers and professionals, Clerks, Craft Workers and Manual Workers (based on the International
Standard Classification of Occupations ISCO88 COM nomenclature at one digit level). Educational
levels are classified by university, secondary and primary education (according to the ISCED
nomenclature at one digit level).
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Besides these patterns concerning the quantity and quality of employment, it is also important
to consider how demand evolves. Business services are strongly dependent on intermediate
demand, while other services rely on final consumption and manufacturing industry shows
equal share of intermediate demand and exports. The evidence is provided in Graph A3 in the
Appendix. These different demand patterns have important consequences on our explanation
of employment growth determinants in business services as opposed to the rest of the
economy.
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reduced.
Interestingly, the Sectoral Innovation Database links all of these factors in a single framework.
4.1. Methodology
The following equation is estimated:
where emp is the sector’s employment level, tc represents the accumulated knowledge related
with technological competitiveness strategy, cc is cost competitiveness, d is demand and w is
the wage; i and t stands for industry and time, respectively. The model is estimated at industry
level for various countries so the individual observation is a certain industry in a given country.
Our main object is to identify the effect of technology and demand. A typical issue is that the
error term u may be correlated with the regressors, because of time-invariant effects or issues
of simultaneity and/or omitted variables.
If we think of variables in the log scale, we know that by taking the differences we approximate
the rate of change. Through this transformation we eliminate the individual time-invariant
effect (we also control for all time-invariant characteristics, such as country-level institutional
determinants which are likely to play a role) and we can exploit the lag structure to avoid
simultaneity.
Technically, we take long differences (e.g. Caroli and Van Reenen, 2001; Piva et al., 2005),
i.e. differences over a large time span, in order to soften considerably the autoregressive
pattern, which would weaken the validity of the lags. As the log difference approximates the
rate of variation, making the average is just a linear transformation of it (not affecting the main
estimators’ properties), we calculate average rate of change which allows us to merge the
different data sources, which have slightly different time spans.
The model is adjusted for heteroscedasticity (robust estimation) and intra-group correlation at
the industry level, checking for intra-sectoral heterogeneity.
Moreover, weighted regressions are used since industry data are typically grouped data of
unequal size; this provides us with more time-wise stability.
The baseline model becomes:
where the dependent variable is the rate of growth of employment, the variation in the
knowledge stock associated with the technological strategies can be proxied by flows
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variables coming from innovation surveys, demand growth is measured through the growth
rate of different sources of demand, w is the growth rate of labour compensation per employee
and the last part is the error term, in which the individual time-invariant effects are eliminated.
Following our conceptual framework, we expect the following relationships to emerge:
1) Proxies for technological competitiveness (the share of firms indicating clients as source of
innovation and the share of firms internal source as determinants for innovation) are expected
to have a positive effect on job growth. Employment growth is stimulated by the greater
demand for new products; the positive effect of the new demand is supposed to prevail on the
effects of reduced production due to forming possible monopoly rents in the consumer market
and/or replacing effects for old products;
2) Indicators of cost competitiveness (the share of firms aiming to reduce labour costs and the
share of firms who indicate suppliers as source of innovation) are expected to have direct
labour saving effects. The effect on prices due to increased productivity can however partially
or totally overcome the reduced employment that derives from recourse to a strategy based
on process innovations.
3) Demand variables are expected to have a positive effect on employment; however, while
exports are supposed to drive productivity and employment growth in manufacturing,
employment growth in services is prevalently associated with the growth of intermediate and
household consumption. In sectors where the role of new information technologies is more
intensive and a sustained growth in terms of value added can be observed, economic growth
is principally linked to changes in the production structure that leads to high intermediate
demand from the rest of the economy: 70% of business-service demand only comes from
other sectors.
In terms of control variables, we expect an inverse relationship between wages (labour
compensation growth rate per employee) and employment creation. Labour demand can
increase when labour costs decrease.
We also ran further robustness checks to control for the market structure of industries; we
expect concentration to be negatively related with growth, through a standard lack of
competitive pressure effect. We also add a control for the firm’s average size in the sector: we
expect it to be negatively correlated with growth for the most dynamic industries, where jobs
are disproportionately created by new (and usually very small) firms (Haltiwanger et al., 2010).
4.2. Data
The analysis considers six countries, Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain and the
United Kingdom for 21 manufacturing and 17 service sectors.
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The model is distinctly examined for manufacturing and services sector. In order to
differentiate the dynamics of services, we isolate the effects of business services from other
services. Industries classified as 64 and 71 to 74 by NACE Rev. 1.1 form the first category,
while industries 50, 51, 52, 55, 63, and 65 to 67 are classified as other services. Whenever we
want to separate the effects among groups of industries we run the regressions on the overall
database but allowing for different coefficients. Although the estimates are exactly the same
as those obtained from regressions over the different groups of observations, the estimates
are more efficient if we use the overall sample, given the number of the degrees of freedom.
We believe the time structure deserves a specific comment. We merge three different data
sources (STAN OECD database for employment growth, OECD I-O Tables for demand
variables and CIS data for innovation measures). Having three waves of Input/Output
available (1995, 2000 and 2005) allowed us to consider the demand growth rates for two
periods, 1995-2000 and 2000-2005. In fact, the employment trend described in Section 3
suggests that business cycle impact should remain in the data. We decided not to include the
2001-2003 recession and focus on two periods of employment growth. We excluded CIS3
data and focused on the impact of innovation variables in CIS2 and CIS4 on employment
performance in 1996-2000 and 2003-2007 (in order to consider a lag in the impact of
innovation).
The temporal structure is shown in the following table:
As we can see, data from Innovation surveys always precede data on employment; with
regards to demand, data for the first time started one year before, and data for the second
period finished two years before.
As a further check, the possibility of multicollinearity is checked through the Variance-Inflation-
Factor (VIF) analysis. A preliminary analysis on the distribution of variables has allowed
possible extreme values to be dropped. Moreover, only the significant differences of variables
are considered. The presence of outliers does not affect the values of coefficients in every
model.
The technological proxies extracted from the extensive information in CIS are chosen
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depending on availability (in order to avoid gaps in the dataset, especially with regards to
service industries) and low number of outliers.
5 Results
5.1. Baseline regressions
First, we ran a general regression with the baseline model.
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The first differentiation that we want to examine is between manufacturing and services. The
results are in Table 3. If we use similar proxies for technological strategies in both
manufacturing and services we can observe that variables are non-significant for
manufacturing.5 Other proxies that better fit the type of innovation of manufacturing industries,
such as those focusing on the relationship with clients and suppliers in the search process
clearly make the technological-cost competitiveness distinction emerge.
When different variables are introduced for manufacturing and services, innovation strategies
are qualitatively different but quantitatively comparable in their effects through the two
groupings. Indeed, technological and cost competitiveness are well captured respectively
through the share of firms indicating clients and those indicating suppliers as source of
innovation. A t-test of the difference of impact between the manufacturing and services proxy
5
The results are available from the author upon request.
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does not reject the hypothesis of a zero difference at 5% confidence level. This is a main
result of the analysis conducted using SID data (Bogliacino and Pianta, 2010 and 2011); its
validity is confirmed in this paper.
Adding 1% to the share of firms that choose technological competitiveness translates into a
higher employment growth rate of +0.03% for manufacturing and +0.08% for services.
Increasing the share of firms who opt for cost competitiveness by 1%, subtracts around 0.05-
0.06 percentage points from the employment growth rate.
The demand effect is largely confined to services, since for manufacturing they are never
significant (meaning that the effect is captured by productivity): again the largest impact
comes from intermediate demand, where 1% increase in demand adds 0.23% to the average
employment growth rate.
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As we can observe, there are three sorts of trajectories emerging: manufacturing shows both
technological and cost competitiveness, but no demand effect; business services are focused
on technological competitiveness and intermediate demand is its main source of demand; and
finally, other services are cost competitiveness intensive and intermediate and household
demand are the main job creation drivers.
On the orders of magnitude, we can observe that rising by 1% the share of firms that choose
technological competitiveness three basis point are added to the employment growth in
manufacturing, and seven basis points in business services. If we were to increase the share
of firms that choose cost competitiveness by 1%, around 0.05% is subtracted from the
average employment growth in manufacturing and other services. Demand counteracts this
direct labour saving effect in the rest of the service sector, but not in manufacturing, where this
compensatory mechanism does not work, at least in the time span considered.
It is also very important to stress that this model captures the heterogeneity quite well: in fact,
it is able to account for around 50% of total variance.
6
Herfindahl Index is a concentration index calculated as the sum of squares of the shares: H = ∑ si2
i
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7
These results are available from the authors upon request.
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(0.470)
Observations 302
F-test 11.13
(P value) (0.000)
R2 0.524
8
National Labour Force Surveys (LFS) are the main sources of data on professions in Europe, as they
provide comparable and detailed information on professions categorised by of employing firms’
economic activity sector (see Lucchese and Pianta, 2011).
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Coherently with the descriptive evidence presented in Section 3, the results show a
fundamental difference between manufacturing and business services: in the former the
employment structure is associated with the more ‘fordist’ system in which employment growth
is associated with middle-range human capital. Business services behave in the reverse
manner: their growth is concentrated into a very high and a very low (mainly those constrained
not to be outsourced) position in the job ranking and as such, polarisation is strongly
associated with structural change towards those industries (for an explanation of the
technological determinants see Autor and Dorn, 2010 and Nascia and Pianta, 2008).
Other services show a pattern similar to manufacturing but with a significantly lower
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a) Since intermediate demand is becoming more and more important due to globalisation
processes, demand management policies are very relevant for the process of job creation.
Negative shocks have stronger effects in the economy;
b) Given the entry of new firms plays an important role in the dynamics of business service
employment growth, it suggests that entry barriers should be eliminated in the most dynamic
parts of the economy;
c) Where cost competitiveness is stronger, policies facing labour reallocation are fundamental
to soften the impact of restructuring;
d) Business service growth induces a transformation of the skill mix required by the economy,
i.e. increasing polarisation and reducing middle-class jobs, which requires proper intervention
of the authorities to prevent negative effects of inequality.
Acknowledgements
This paper builds on a presentation to the workshop “Business services for innovation,
internationalisation and growth”, held at the University of Rome La Sapienza, 2-3 December
2010. We would like to thank Rinaldo Evangelista, Valentina Meliciani and the participants for
their comments.
We acknowledge financial support from IPTS with the Project 151834 - Gathering quantitative
evidence of the impact of corporate R&D and innovation on employment: An analysis of
demand, supply and institutional factors at industry and firm level.
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Appendix
Information on employment changes for each service industry and for the all of manufacturing
is provided in Graph A1 below.
Graph A1. Compound annual rates of employment growth. Averages across countries.
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Graph A3 shows the composition of demand for each macro sector. While manufacturing is
characterised by a strong share of exports, traditional and finance services are related to
internal demand. As expected, business services are linked to the demand for intermediate
consumption, while the other components only constitute a modest share of total demand.
32
European Commission
EUR 24747 EN/4 – Joint Research Centre – Institute for Prospective Technological Studies
Abstract
The patterns and mechanisms of job creation in business services are investigated in this article by
considering the role of innovation, demand, wages and the composition of employment by
professional groups. A model is developed and an empirical test is carried out with parallel analyses
on a group of selected business services, on other services and on manufacturing sectors,
considering six major European countries over the period 1996-2007.
Within technological activities, a distinction is made between those supporting either technological
competitiveness, or cost competitiveness. Demand variables allow identifying the special role of
intermediate demand.
Job creation in business services appears to be driven by efforts to expand technological
competitiveness and by the fast growing intermediate demand coming from other industries;
conversely, process innovation leads to job losses and wage growth has a negative effect that is
lower than in other industries. Business services show an increasingly polarised employment
structure.
The mission of the Joint Research Centre is to provide customer-driven scientific
and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and
monitoring of European Union policies. As a service of the European Commission,
LF-ND-24747-EN-N
the Joint Research Centre functions as a reference centre of science and technology
for the Union. Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of
the Member States, while being independent of special interests, whether private or
national.